Tuesday, September 30, 2014

From the dusty TDOY archives: Slither (1973)

Paroled from prison after serving a stretch for car theft,
easygoing Richard “Dick” Kanipsia (James Caan) agrees to stop by the B.F.E.
home of fellow parolee Harry Moss (Richard B. Schull) for a beer before heading
down the highway, destination to be determined.What transpires during his visit with Harry will cement his future
itinerary; no sooner have the two settled down in Moss’ living room when shots
ring out and Harry is mortally wounded by an unknown assassin(s).Calm—but clearly about to shuffle off this
mortal coil—Harry tells Dick that he needs to head for a town called Fallbrook
and contact one Barry Fenaka (Peter Boyle), F-E-N-A-K-A.Mentioning the name “Vincent Palmer” will
lead to financial rewards beyond Dick’s wildest dreams.

And so Mr. Kanipsia’s odyssey begins: a journey that wryly
comments he was definitely better off in the joint, since the world has apparently
become an asylum in the time he’s been in stir.On his way to Fallbrook, Dick tangles with a hostile farmer (Seamon
Glass) who gives him a ride, and later meets an engagingly flaky free spirit
named Kitty Kopetzky (Sally Kellerman)…who decides to rob the diner the two are
breakfasting in at two in the a.m.Once
making contact with Fenaka and his wife Mary (Louise Lasser), the three of them
hitch up a car to Barry’s Airstream trailer and are off to contact Mr.
Palmer—an adventure comprised of sinister accountants driving a pair of jet-black
“Rec-V’s”; a suspenseful encounter at a bingo tent; and a shootout at a
vegetable stand.

Slither (1973)
was the directorial debut of Howard Zieff, who had achieved much critical acclaim
as a creator of TV commercials (Alka-Seltzer, Benson-Hedges, etc.).His movie resume was relatively brief (he
stopped directing after 1994’s My Girl 2
due to the effects of Parkinson’s disease) and his best-known film is
inarguably Private Benjamin (1980), the
popular military farce starring Goldie Hawn.But in the 1970s, Zieff demonstrated a deft touch for film comedy: his wistfully
nostalgic Hearts of the West
(1975—which airs tomorrow evening at 1:15am on The Greatest Cable Channel Known
to Mankind™) and acerbically romantic HouseCalls (1978) stand as some of the
finest offerings of that era.

When I sat down with Slither
yesterday, I’m pretty certain it had been over thirty years since I’d seen it;
I watched it with the 'rents in their pre-Law & Order-obsession days and
remembered liking the film, since its poker-faced comedy style appealed to me
enormously.I was worried that it
wouldn’t hold up well…but I think I enjoyed it more on my second viewing.It is most assuredly not for all tastes: it’s
a shaggy-dog story with just a bare minimum of plot—most of the humor in the
film originates in the perplexity of Caan’s protagonist Dick Kanipsia as he
reacts to the various weirdoes he encounters.Case in point: arriving at Fenaka’s, Dick has a gun pulled on him by
Barry and the two of them wrestle for control of the firearm.Once the two men have worked out their
initial suspicions of one another (after Dick tells Barry of Harry’s demise),
Dick is invited to meet Mrs. Fenaka…who turns out to be an old classmate of his
from high school (though she was two years behind).As the two of them reminisce, Barry has
difficulty concealing his displeasure (and in the hands of Peter Boyle, this is
falling-down funny).Later, Dick and
Mary go with Barry to his “job”—he’s master of ceremonies at an event honoring
a war veteran (Stuart Nisbet) as “Man of the Year.”

In an August
2008 interview with Bright Lights
Film Journal; actor Caan remarked on his “versatility”: “[W]hether I
did that thing with Bette Midler [For
the Boys, 1991], or Funny Lady
[1975], or Kiss MeGoodbye [1982], people would say, ‘Jimmy,
we didn't know you sang and danced.’ I said, ‘Well, nobody ever asked me.’”Slither
gave the thesp critically acclaimed at that time for his dramatic turns in Brian’s Song (1971) and The Godfather (1972) a chance to
unleash his comedic chops (though you can certainly argue he generated much
mirth in El Dorado)…which he indulged
in such later vehicles as Cinderella Liberty
(1973) and Honeymoon in Vegas
(1992).Caan’s laconic, Mitchum-like
approach to portraying Dick Kanipsia makes the role one of his best acting
showcases—my favorite moment in the film is when he deadpans “Listen…uh…I think
I’d just as soon be sleeping in a bed when you kill us all” after witnessing
Kitty’s bat-out-of-hell driving (he’s referring to bedding down in the trailer
behind them).Kellerman’s character is
also a lot of fun; her theory that the sinister vans following Dick and the
Fenakas are “flying saucers” made me spit out my iced tea.

Oscar nominee W.D. Richter (Brubaker) penned Slither’s
script (which later inspired a TV sitcom pilot the following year, with Barry
Bostwick in the Caan role); he would later adapt such favorites as Invasion ofthe Body Snatchers (1978) and Big
Trouble in Little China (1986) and direct the cult classic TheAdventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8thDimension (1984).(I never
quite warmed to Banzai—it plays like
a serial already in progress—but I do have much love for his sci-fi comedy Late for Dinner [1991].)The presence of Richter might explain why
some folks don’t care for Slither…though
strangely enough, I remember that John Simon liked the film—and he hated anything that wasn’t in a foreign
language.

As I’ve stated, Caan, Kellerman, Boyle and Lasser are all
first-rate in their roles; Richard Shull is sublime as the doomed Harry, Allen
Garfield plays one of the accountants with a vested interest in the
Kanipsia-Fenaka fortunes and Caan’s fellow Godfather
player Alex Rocco (“Moe Greene”) will make you smile as a man juggling ice
cream cones whom Dick mistakes as the owner of the mysterious vans.While I’ll freely admit Slither can’t quite sustain its premise to the end of the film
(though the punchline made me laugh), it’s a nostalgic memory that I had a
great deal of fun reliving. The film is available as an MOD DVD release from the Warner Archive (please don't confuse it with the 2006 horror film of the same name). Happy days
are here again!